Snotty Kids

Are you tired of snotty kids? I know I am. No, not the crumb grinding infant set. That’s another story. I’m talking about the sniveling 16 – 26 year olds that don’t have the common sense to come in out of the rain….and yet….they act like they have the wisdom of the ages locked in their puny little brains. In reality, they know jack. Take away their hand held and I doubt if they could add two plus two and come up with four!!!

I was channel surfing the other night and came across Reba McIntyre’s new program Malibu something or other. Reba is the hapless parent surrounded by two teen age brats who are endowed with unending wisdom, and her former pot head mother played by Lily Tomlin who knows the answer to life resides somewhere between marijuana and LSD. Never mind that it’s Reba who has to pay the bills and hold everything together. She’s just a schmuck, a poor working schmuck.

In many ways this show is emblematic about our society today. Those who are working and trying to make an honest living are assaulted by everyone around us who is not. We are told we are no good. We are told we are not paying our fair share. Those older than us are stoned, and those younger than are helpless, sniveling, dependant little cry babies who need to get off the couch and go to work.

Is there any show on television where the working stiff is not the jackass? Look at Modern Family. Dad is realtor and is portrayed somewhat short of being a duffus. The grandfather, who is married to the Latin bombshell, is portrayed as stuffy and stiff. Even in the gay couple the working partner is shown as being “not fun.”

It’s hard to distinguish whether this is life imitating art or art imitating life. My wife teaches with a bunch of twenty somethings who don’t know her name nor do they care to. They don’t say hello. They don’t say goodbye. They don’t say go to hell. They just look at her out of the corner of their eye and snicker. Maybe it’s because she isn’t in jeans. Maybe it’s because her hair is done and she is wearing makeup. Maybe it’s because she handles her job responsibly. Or maybe it’s because these folks couldn’t make polite conversation if they wanted to…and they don’t want to. Their noses are buried in their cell phones and tablets.

I was raised to respect my elders. I was raised to respect other people, period!! When we wanted to buy something we were told you aren’t old enough to have that yet. We didn’t have granite counter tops. We lived in an apartment with no air conditioning until I was 35. Not today. The know it alls have it all, or at least they think so.

I’m not sure how this will end. I am hoping for the best, but to be honest, I am not at all optimistic about the up and coming generations.  Material things have been taken too much for granted. These folks don’t realize that we are just one pulsar away from the Stone Age. Ask the folks in New Jersey and New York about life after Hurricane Sandy. Maybe it will take something like that on a national scale to get this nation’s priorities back in the proper order. I hope not.

In the meantime...a pleasant hello might be nice.